Cyberpunk Sunday 005 - hearts, politics and chips.

This week I'm going to give you a short and sweet with three links. Each rather interesting if you ask me.

First up. We have all heard of pacemakers which make a heart beat in a specific rhythm, then there were artificial hearts that pump the blood through your system mimicking a normal human heart, well now it's to well with making a copy of the heart and just downright improving it. How about a set of turbines in your chest? Now how are these different than the others you may ask... I'm glad you did. You see they don't pump the blood through in bursts, instead you get a constant flow. Now add a level of creepy to this lovely little bit of protocybertech... this means there is no pulse and their EKG is constantly flatlining. Yeah no thump thump in the ole' chest anymore. Go ahead and read up some more on this by following the link.

The turbine heart

Now for a little political/social outlook. Michelle Bachman is currently tossing her hat into the ring for trying to become the next President on the GOP ticket. However she seems to be lacking in her facts on things. One, she claimed that John Wayne was born in Waterloo Iowa; two, she claimed that John Quincy Adams was one of the founding fathers of the United States. Both of these are wrong. But her supporters aren't letting that get in the way and they take a turn that gets them a cyberpunk mention. They log in and alter the details of John Wayne and John Quincy Adams to make them match what Bachmann has said. Rewriting history a bit if you will.

Now with more and more information being put online and a large number of folks depending on the internet to get their facts this can get interesting. Now these two changes got spotted because her claims got some national news media attention. But if people were to start going in and altering the facts of things that aren't being scrutinized right now how long would it take to be noticed? Would it get noticed? Once this false information is up there and people start reading it thinking it to be real it becomes more ingrained into ourselves that it's a fact. For those Cyberpunk 2020 fans out there this has a whole feeling of the Rache Bartmoss history altering virus he created.

Read the article

Finally IBM has just blown the doors off the memory market with their latest little invention. Phase Change Memory, or as it's been getting called 'instantaneous memory'. You thought the data flow was quick before, get ready for the doors to get blown off. This little thing is around a 100 times faster than the current top of the line memory technology (resetting the top of the line I guess). It uses controlled bursts of electricity to shift the special alloy into different physical states allowing it to do more, a lot more.

See the chip

That's it for this Sunday. Two weeks from now I'll be putting up an entertainment themed Cyberpunk Sunday installment. Hope you come back to give it a read.